Google Takes the Android One Plunge in India: A Teardown of What's on Offer

Google is set to dawn on a new age in Android smartphones. While the regular Android updates keep pouring every now and then, Google is set to make the entire Android ecosystem more viable for all those in the first time category. And the answer to that is Android One.

An urge has always been there to own something good without shelling out much. Android One seems to be the answer to that with Google striking partnerships with handsets makers such as Karbonn, Micromax and Spice to make that dream into a burning reality.

With Android One, Google hopes to offer users the best hardware-software combination at a most reasonable price tag possible. And although you may question Google's integrity in this respect since all the three makers have filled the handsets with similar specs, but then again, it isn't meant for everybody but for the first time users.

For the moment, it's just three handset makers who have jumped on to Google's Android One bandwagon. And with similar price tags and specs, there's not much to choose from. But this is just the beginning, and soon it will aim for much more that will be both below and above that $100 price tag.

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In fact, even mobile carriers have joined in on the new revolution. We are already seeing Airtel with a new offer that allows users with the connection to upgrade to the latest version of Android without using any data for the download. These are just small instances where carriers are getting into the act and delivering, but how long will it be before more decide on joining.

However, the market isn't as kind as it usually looks, and the change has been noticable since Sundar Pichai, Google senior vice president for Android, Chrome and Apps, announced the Android One initiative earlier this year. There are already handsets that offer far better specs for just a bit more of the cash. And this will be a challenge for Google to make people understand the value of Android One.

And the only big weapon that Google has in this respect is the promise of offering pure Android at a price that wasn't possible earlier. This brings the handsets in the initiative closer to the popular Nexus devices that priced so massively. This also means all the new updates from Google reaching far earlier than others.

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Since the initiative is big thing for all the Indian users, Google also understands that apart from the price factor, another barrier they will have to face is concerned with the language in use. But the company is countering it by introducing features like Google Translate which now has Hindi-English-Hindi support with a more viable voice search support that now listens to and understands it.

Apart from this, Google also promises to make YouTube available offline on these phones in the coming months. And for a person who likes to stick to the video streaming service 24/7, this is a massive offer to resist. All the videos on youtube and that too without Internet? Google isn't joking.

The road for Android One may be a bumpy one but it has at least set off in the right direction. From here, Google will make its own fate, and the first step to that is offering all that was promised. But a pure Android experience under the $100 price tag seems too good a deal to pass up on.